A Farewell to Arms

Epic farewell

The 1957 remake of A Farewell to Arms seems like a good idea. Update
the film technically with colour and improved sound. Give it more time,
two and a half hours, to develop the characters and include more of Ernest Hemingway's novel. Play it more sophisticatedly for a more knowing
audience. And make the war scenes more horrible.

In short, go for another Gone with the Wind—which is what
producer David O. Selznik is reputed to have thought. Starting with the
tagline displayed over the opening under the title: "A romantic tragedy of
wartime."

But this Farewell to Arms, directed by the workmanlike Charles Vidor, raises
the romance to an even giddier height, again swamping with sentiment the
harder side of Hemingway's story. The actors, with Rock Hudson and
Jennifer Jones in the lead, are up to the romantic
task—despite Hudson being too 1950s-style good looking and despite
Selznik's wife Jones really being too old (in her upper thirties) for the
role. Famed
Italian actor Vittorio De Sica takes the Rinaldi role as credibly as you
would expect–and earns an Oscar nomination for it.

We get more of the original story, with wonderfully awful depictions
of the Italian retreat, the horrors of the arrest and sentencing to death
of Henry and Rinaldi, and the excitement of the lovers' escape to
Switzerland.

Moreover, the tragic conclusion is played out in excruciating
detail.

Unfortunately now though, the film drags, especially in the endless love
scenes and the ain't-we-got-fun montages of the lovers' romps in Italy and
Switzerland between the serious scenes.

Oddly, neither this film version nor its forerunner were based directly
on Hemingway's novel but rather on a stage play adapted from the book by
Laurence Stallings. Oddly because the films are so different. The first one
reflects Hemingway's style better, while this one captures more of the story.

Neither comes anywhere near what Hemingway created. But why bitch about
it? Perhaps filming Hemingway's story exactlyh as written would have resulted in a drearier
film that would interest no one, except a few Hemingway purists like
myself.

We should probably be thankful we've never seen the 1966 television
mini-series of Farewell to Arms starring George Hamilton and
Venessa Redgrave.

A 1951 movie, Force of Arms, directed by Michael Curtiz and
featuring William Holden as an American soldier in Italy during the Second
World War, is supposed to
be an uncredited update of A Farewell to Arms. Didn't see that one either. Will try not to.